TikTok has unveiled Family Safety Mode, a new feature that allows parents and guardians of minor users to control screen time, police direct messages and restrict inappropriate content. The tool was announced by TikTok’s head of trust and safety, EMEA Cormac Keenan, via a post on the company’s official website on Wednesday (Feb. 19).
The new feature, which is now available in the U.K. and will roll out in additional markets over the next several weeks, allows parents to link their TikTok accounts to their children's in order to regulate their usage and interactions. Though these “Digital Wellbeing” controls were already available for individual users, Family Safety Mode is a way for parents to more closely monitor their children's activity.
In the same post, TikTok also revealed that it has partnered with some of the app’s most popular influencers to create prompts in users’ feeds that will urge them to be more mindful of the time they’re spending on the platform. Screen-time management, which allows users to set limits on the amount of time they spend on TikTok every day, was previously introduced in April 2019 but has never been present in feeds before.